The generic terms mbira
or thumb piano are used to indicate a percussion instrument
of African origin. It consists of a wooden board or box
with strips of metal or wood attached in such a way that
the player's thumbs or fingers can pluck the metal strips
to produce a rhythmic melody. Mbira are made from
an assortment of materials, such as wood, metal gas and
insecticide cans, gourds and coconut shells, and in a great
variety of sizes, shapes and types, and they exist as acoustic
or electric instruments. The number of traditional African
types alone would take an entire book to detail, and a diverse
assortment of these instruments can be found in the Western
world as well.

Sanza
of Collin Walcott (Kondi from Sierra Leone)

Nomenclature

The terms "thumb
piano" and "finger piano" are names in the
West for the instrument and yet, at the same time, they
are the most inappropriate from an African perspective (also
incorrect are African piano, African nail violin, hand piano,
and Kaffir piano). Ethnomusicologists use another term that
places all these instruments in a single generic category:
"lamellaphone" (also lamellophone) designates
any instrument with plucked keys (or lamellae) attached
to a soundboard, with the possible addition of a resonator.
What is called a "thumb piano" or "finger
piano" is often a specific instrument from an African
culture. Such instruments may be used, in an African traditional
setting, in ritual ceremonies, such as those performed by
the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Renaming the instrument for
Western purposes is akin to calling a concert violin a "fiddle."
Nevertheless, "thumb piano" and "finger piano"
are names found on many recordings and in many publications.
To complicate matters further, on Western recordings a generic
name like mbira, kalimba, or sanza
may appear, but it is more often used as an exotic name
than as an identifier of a specific African instrument.
The term "kalimba" was popularized by
the African music researcher Hugh Tracey (from England).
Traveling to Zimbabwe in the 1920s (then known as Rhodesia),
Tracey was attracted to the Shona mbira and eventually
made an international version by the 1960s that he called
kalimba. Although the term "mbira"
is a Shona term meaning an instrument specific to their
culture, the term is used in this article generically as
is often the case in non-African popular musics. Following
is a list of mbira-type instruments (with their
usual number of keys) and the country where they are found.
All of the instruments listed are used in musics native
to Africa or the African Diaspora. The list demonstrates
the number of instruments of similar appearance and construction
that are found in different places and often with only slightly
different names.

In addition to the traditional instruments found in Africa
and the African Diaspora, more generic versions, based on
those of traditional African design, have been made by Western
instrument makers. Makers in North America often give the
instrument the generic name of thumb piano, mbira,
or kalimba. A Western innovation is the purely
electric mbira (the "e.mbira"), made
by Lucinda
Ellison (and also those made by David
Bellinger), which is constructed in a similar fashion
to the solid-body electric guitar, with internal pickups
under the bridge and a jack to plug into an amplifier. Fully
electric mbira dza vadzimu are designed and built
in the USA by Dan Pauli (including mbira dza vadzimu
with extra keys, chromatic mbira, and electric
bass mbira dza vadzimu that are much lower than
traditional Shona instruments). Other North American acoustic
makers include Ryphon
Gray, Scotty Hayward,
Kevin Nathaniel,
and Leonard Nicoll. Portuguese maker Nuno
Cristo has developed an entirely bamboo mbira dza
vadzimu tuned an octave lower than Shona mbira.
Perhaps the most original designer of modern lamellaphones
in the USA is Bill Wesley who, along with Patrick Hadley,
has designed a completely new type of lamellae layout and
an acoustic - electric instrument called the array
mbira (120 lamellae, four octaves, chromatic).
One difference between African and Western lamellaphones
is that the former most often have shells, metal rings or
bottle caps attached which make a buzzing sound when the
keys are plucked—a desired African aesthetic. Western-made
lamellaphones often do not have buzzers attached, which
gives the instruments a plainer sound but makes recording
in popular music less problematic.

Tuning represents another
important difference between African and Western instruments.
African instruments use mainly two types of scales for lamellaphones—a
five-pitch scale and a seven-pitch scale—although
other types may be found as well. Tuning in Africa is regional,
which means that a tuning from one particular area might
not match exactly with a tuning from another area if the
scale intervals were compared. This is part of an African
aesthetic in music—tuning varies across the continent
and the variations add to the beauty of an area's music.
In contrast, tuning in the West has become standardized,
and variations are considered 'out of tune' so the pentatonic
and heptatonic scales used on Western made instruments have
all been standardized. A few different heptatonic scales
are played on the Shona lamellaphones in Zimbabwe, such
as on the mbira dza vadzimu. These scales may appear
to be major (Dambatsoko), natural minor, Mixolydian
(Nyamaropa), or Phrygian (Gandanga), with
some interval differences from Western scales (see mbira
tunings).

Another difference between
African and Western keyed instruments is in how the keys
are arranged. A Western keyboard (as on the piano) is arranged
from lowest pitches to highest from the left to the right.
Most lamellaphones are arranged with the lowest key in the
center, and the player alternately plucks right and left
or vice versa (depending on how the keyboard has been set
up) to ascend the scale. The Shona mbira dza vadzimu
are an exception—they make use of three manuals on
a single instrument. The left side of the instrument is
played primarily with the left thumb and has two rows of
seven keys in octaves arranged from the center to the left
for ascending, while the right side, which is played with
the right thumb and forefinger, is arranged from the center
to the right for ascending.

Mbira
dza vadzimu of Zimbabwe

Njari
of Zimbabwe

The basic technique for
playing the mbira involves plucking the keys, or
lamellae, with the fingertips and fingernails. Some techniques
involve playing with the index, middle and ring fingers
of each hand, as on the Nigerian agidigbo while
the Cameroonian sanza makes use of all of the fingers
but no thumbs. Other techniques involve the use of the thumbs
plucking down on the keys while the index fingers pluck
up from beneath them, as on the mbira dza vadzimu
from Zimbabwe (often metal finger picks are placed on the
tips of the thumbs and index finger for ease of play). The
thumbs are used to pluck the keys of the sanza
in the Central African Republic. The material used for the
keys varies: some are made from a heavier, stiffer metal
that requires the player to have a longer thumbnail to play
comfortably, while others may be of a softer, more flexible
metal that makes plucking with the fingertip comfortable.
The mbira can be played melodically by plucking
out a melody on the keys, or in a rhythmic fashion by plucking
a pattern on one side of the keyboard while a pattern that
fills in between the first is plucked on the other side.

In a very broad sense,
two types of popular music make use of mbira: popular
musics of Africa and parts of the African Diaspora, and
Western popular musics (non-African). In Africa, popular
music can be considered an urban phenomenon. That is to
say, urban situations make possible a detribalized zone
of cultural interaction in which strict adherence to specific
cultural traditions may not operate. Urban musics in Africa
are the result of the combining of local traditional elements
with Western influences, such as the radio, the microphone,
and music business, and instruments like the electric guitar,
saxophone, trumpet, electric bass, keyboards and drumset.
The urban music of the Shona People of Zimbabwe, known as
chimurenga (uprising), involves a mixing of mbira
music with rock, Christian hymns, jazz and various types
of traditional songs. This music came about as a result
of the uprising of indigenous Black Africans against White
European colonialism. The uprising began in the 1890s and,
by the 1970s, fully Western influences (in terms of the
use of electric instrumentation) in chimurenga
songs had become evident. After failing to win a music competition
to rock artists, Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited
formed in 1977 and started incorporating aspects of traditional
Shona music, such as mbira dza vadzimu patterns
played on multiple electric guitars as well as up to three
mbira players including Chartwell Dutiro. Another
important Zimbabwean artist is Ephat Mujuru with the Spirit
of the People, whose music involves the use of electric
Shona mbira. Cameroonian Pierre
Didy Tchakounté featured both the traditional wooden-keyed
sanza and a more modern metal-keyed version in
his mangambeu urban music recordings from the 1970s.
Hukwe Ubi Zawose of Tanzania may be viewed as a
neo-traditionalist who has rebuilt his instrument, the ilimba,
to include between 66 and 72 keys tuned in just intonation,
many of which are used for ‘sympathetic’ resonance.
Another African musician, Francis Bebey, has studied various
musical traditions in Africa and mixes them together on
his recordings, often including lamellaphones. The music
of the Orchestre Bana Luya (children of the Baluba people)
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC formerly Zaïre)
also features an electric lamellaphone. An important figure
in early Zaïro-Congolese urban music was Antoine Moundanda
who formed the band Likembé Géant in the early
1950s that used three giant likembe and played
Congolese rumba, polkas, and traditional music
and recorded many LPs for the Ngoma label. Konono N°1
is a modern ensemble from the DRC that performs on self-made
electrified likembes developed by Mawangu Mingiedi.
All of these recorded examples of African uses of lamellaphones
in urban music are from the past 50 years, but one of the
earliest examples of the use of these instruments in recorded
popular music is from the African Diaspora.

Antoine
Moundanda (center) & Likembé Géant on
likembe from DRC

Electrified
likembe of the group Konono N°1 from DRC

Mawangu
Mingiedi on electrified likembe, of DRC group Konono
N°1

Muyamba
Nyunyi on 20" bass likembe from DRC

Electric
likembe from DRC

Electric
likembe from DRC

Giant-size, box-shaped
instruments with between four and seven keys attached (8-13
in some modern versions, see Cloud Nine marímbula
with wooden lamellae tuned to circle of fifths pictured
below) appeared all over the Caribbean and parts of South
America as a result of the slave trade. These instruments
were known by several different names (see nomenclature
above) and were used to provide a bass sound in various
musics. Although they have mostly been replaced by the acoustic
bass, some can still be found in Jamaica (for example, in
the mento
musicof the Jolly Boys or The Triangles,
among others), Trinidad, Puerto Rico and, occasionally,
Cuba. The earliest surviving recordings were made in Cuba
in 1925 by the bands Terceto Yoyo and Sexteto Habenero,
with Gerardo Martinez and Chucho Aristola, respectively,
on the marímbula. The marímbula
has also been used in modern percussion music compositions
by composers Amadeo Roldan (Two Ritmicas, 1930)
and William Russell (Three Cuban Pieces, 1939).

German made
modern marímbula & American Cloud Nine
marímbula

Close up
of Cloud Nine chromatic marímbula

The Triangles
mento group from Jamaica

Even though they are not traditional to
the West, mbira appear in many kinds of popular
music recordings in Europe and the USA, from neo-traditional
African music, blues, jazz and movie/television/radio soundtracks
to Broadway shows and creative "world music."
One of the earliest US recordings to include the instrument
was the recording Drums of Passionby Babatunde
Olatunji in 1959. Olatunji had come from Nigeria to study
in the United States and with the growing trend among African
Americans to promote African awareness, his music became
popular. Olatunji plays a kalimba on this recording,
which features a host of jazz musicians, including Yusef
Lateef. An earlier recording, Kind of Blue by Miles
Davis (1959), is an example of a melodic/harmonic concept
in jazz (modal jazz) inspired by the mbira. In
his autobiography (1989), Davis states that, having been
inspired by African lamellaphone music, he was trying to
limit the scales and chords of his compositions on this
recording in an effort to work in a restricted melodic/harmonic
framework as a lamellaphone does. Another jazz recording,
The African Beat (1962) by Art Blakey and the Afro-Drum
Ensemble (an ensemble of African drummers and African-American
jazz musicians), features Yusef Lateef on the kalimba.
In 1966, the Broadway show Wait a Minim! featured
folk music from southern Africa, with Paul Tracey playing
the mbira (Tracey also appeared on Johnny Carson’s
The Tonight Show, demonstrating the mbira
and several other African instruments). A recording that
features a blend of electronic music and world instruments
by composer Jon Appleton and world jazzman Don Cherry (on
kalimba) is Human Music (1970). Bluesman
Taj Mahal started playing solos on a Hugh Tracey kalimba
in his concerts after first hearing the instrument in a
movie. His recording Recycling the Blues and Other Related
Stuff (1972) features a live solo.

As a novelty device, the instrument made an unusual appearance
in a comedy act by Robert Klein, an example of which is
included on his 1973 recording A Child of the Fifties.
Art music composers have scored for lamellaphones as well
including Lou Harrison in The Music for Violin with
Various Instruments—European, Asian and African
(III. Allegro moderato) (mbira, 1969) and George
Crumb (Hugh Tracey kalimba) in Night of the
Four Moons (1969) and Music for a Summer Evening
(Makrokosmos III) (1974). In jazz fusion, bassist Paul
Jackson played the marimbula with Herbie Hancock
in 1973. With the offshoot group The Headhunters, Jackson
sometimes quoted John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme"
as a bass figure on the marimbula on recordings
such as Survival of the Fittest (1975). Perhaps
the most mainstream use of the instrument occurs in recordings
by the group Earth, Wind & Fire, featuring Maurice White
as one of three percussionists. White also used a Hugh Tracey
kalimba (an early example is on "Kalimba Story" from Open Our Eyes in 1974), and he was able
to successfully perform fast solos on the instrument and
incorporate it into the body of his ensemble’s music.

Collin Walcott's Sanza
Style

One of the most creative lamellaphone players
in the United States was the inimitable percussionist/sitarist
Collin Walcott. Walcott played a kondi, which he
referred to generically as "sanza," made
from an insecticide can, which had nine keys and was tuned
to a scale with no third or sixth and a flat seventh in
Western tuning (E-F#-A-B-D-E-F#-A-B from the center, alternating
right to left). His technique was unusual in that he flipped
the instrument over so that the keys faced away from him,
and he plucked with the index, middle and ring fingers of
both hands. He used this instrument first on a recording
of composer Irwin Bazelon’s Propulsions: Concerto
for Percussion (composed/recorded in 1974), then on
the group Oregon’s recording Out of the Woods
(1978) and later on Barry Wedgle’s Kake (1982);
it also featured prominently in many of his compositions
recorded between 1979 and 1983 with the trio Codona (with
Don Cherry and Naná Vasconcelos). Since Walcott’s
death in 1984, one of his students, Rich Goodhart, has perpetuated
the technique and style on his own recordings.

During the 1980s and 1990s, percussionists
such as Adam Rudolph, Glen Velez, Paolo Vinaccia, Layne
Redmond, John Bergamo, Okay Temiz, Rich Goodhart, N. Scott
Robinson, Nexus, Chocolate [Julio Algendones], B. Michael
Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Santiago Vazquez (from Argentina),
Mark Duggan (from
Canada), and Bob Moses used mbira creatively in
their music, as did jazz musicians Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith,
Steve Tibbetts, Egberto Gismonti, Jean-Jacques Avenel and
the Canadian multi-ethnic pop band Ashkaru (with Chip Yarwood
on mbira). Other musicians who play make non-traditional
creative use of various mbira include Virginia
Barrett, Jomo, Armando Ortega (of the Chicano-Shona
influenced band Wagogo),
Billy X. Curmano, and Patrick Hadley, among others. Composers
for Hollywood movies and for radio recordings have used
the lamellaphone creatively on soundtracks as well. One
example is the film Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), with
music by Michael Kamen, which has mbira in the
background music to several scenes. In the 1990s, the nationally
broadcast Talk of the Nation show on National Public
Radio, with theme music by Bob Boilen, a sampled kalimba
was featured prominently with orchestral accompaniment.
Television viewers may be misled by hearing a similar sounding
instrument on an occasional soundtrack to The X-Files
(1990s), with music by Mark Snow, but this is another example
of sampling technology on contemporary keyboards and is
not a real lamellaphone player (keyboards such as the Korg
M-1 featured a kalimba sample as early as 1988).

Conclusion

Organological, technical and timbral diversification
by Western percussionists in popular music was fairly common
after 1960. Lamellaphones were adopted by some musicians
after they had been exposed to African sources either directly
or indirectly through films and recordings. Although lamellaphones
are not so common that players are abundant, Western companies
have continued to construct various types and distribute
them. Although instruments are abundant in the West, their
use in popular music is largely limited to creative percussionists
and other musicians on occasional recordings.

________. How to Play
Zimbabwe’s Mbira Huru, Using a Very Simple Number
Method and a Companion Record: Steps SPACE
One and
Two. Harare: The Zimbabwe Mbira Distance Education
Project (ZIMMDEP), 2000 (booklet with cassette).

________. The JVC
Video Anthology of World Music and Dance vol. 17-Middle
East & Africa II: SPACE SPACE
SPACE
SPACE
Egypt/Tunisia/Morocco/Mali/Cameroon/Zaire/Tanzania.
1988. JVC, Victor Company of Japan (video). (Example
SPACE from
Cameroon of the Fulhe People-sanza).

________. The JVC
Video Anthology of World Music and Dance vol. 19-Middle
East & Africa IV: Ivory SPACE
SPACE
SPACE
Coast/Botswana/Republic
of South Africa. 1988. JVC, Victor Company of
Japan (video). (Example from Botswana of SPACE
the San Bushmen-lamellaphone).

________. Mbira Music:
The Spirit of the People (The Spirit of Zimbabwe). 1990.
Films for the Humanities & Sciences SPACE
(video). (Various
Shona, including Stella Rambisai Chiweshe, on various Shona
mbira).

________. The JVC/Smithsonian
Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Africa vol.
2: The SPACE SPACE
SPACE
SPACE
Gambia/Liberia/Ghana/Nigeria.
1996. JVC, Victor Company of Japan (video). (Example
of lamellaphone from SPACE
Liberia).